Martin's Journey and Formative Years

Malcolm Stern 0:46

So welcome to my podcast , slay your Dragons With Compassion , done in conjunction with my friends at online events , and very happy to welcome today an old friend , martin Polakoff , who's a very eminent psychotherapist and for six years was chair of the UK Council of Psychotherapists and is an elder in my tradition , so I'd be interested to to hear his journey , how he's got to that place . So , martin , welcome here , thank you , and and what's taken you to , to who you are , what's , what's been your journey ? Well , I was born in birmingham .

Martin Pollecoff 1:22

Right , that's a big thing . There's adversity before you start .

Martin Pollecoff 1:26

Pardon that is adversity no I mean when I was born there in 49, . You know , when I grew up there it was a thriving industrial city which crashed in 1967 , as all the industry started to move out or collapse in on itself . But it was a hard city , an iron-melting , steel-driving city . It wasn't , you know , and everywhere made things . So that's part of my background . You know , I worked since I was about 14 .

Martin Pollecoff 2:03

My father always insisted on me going to work in every holiday and I worked in every factory around and I worked in Rubry Mental Home , you know as it was called then , which was a giant Victorian asylum just outside of Birmingham , which was fascinating . I loved it , but what really made me was failure . My successes have never taught me a lot , but when was a kid I was dyslexic and I kept . You know it was really difficult . At school I did well , but I'm not sure how it was really difficult . I was always in detention , always being made to do copper plate , which I could never do . It's just impossible . But they thought I was just lazy . I was was lazy but I couldn't do it .

Martin Pollecoff 2:53

And I went to college to do something I didn't want to do . I did law because my father wanted me to do that and I had a breakdown and I couldn't do anything . I could just hang around in my flat and cry . And I went to the doctors . They gave me Nembutol you know , if you remember those really blocking things and I went back the next week and said have you got anything else ? And he said not really . No , um , I didn't know anything about psychotherapy or psychology at that point . I'd read a book or two , but nothing . So I phoned my father and I said do you know who could help ? And he said I do know somebody and he could help . And he said I do know somebody and he gave me a number of a guy in London . I phoned him up and he said oh , I can't see him too busy , but come and have lunch .

Malcolm Stern 3:40

And it was very nice .

Martin Pollecoff 3:42

I thought , okay , I'll have lunch at least , perhaps . Perhaps in his club or something . A great restaurant . He was a psychiatrist and his address was in whitechapel . When I got there was a railway arch and he boarded it up . He was a marxist and he'd set up a free clinic . He was a psychiatrist . And he said look , um , and he opened his snap tin and gave me half a sandwich , half a sardine sandwich , and he said we'll talk . Wasn't what I expected . We'll talk and let's see how we get on .

Martin Pollecoff 4:12

So I spent about 30 minutes telling him how awful my life was and I was falling asleep , you know , I couldn't stop crying and things . And I said what do you ? What do you think ? Do you think I'm mad ? Because I was frightened I was falling off the earth , I was falling off the edge and I would not get back . And he said no , I think you're stupid . I said well , it wasn't really what I expected you to say . I said okay , why am I stupid ? He said because you're working very , very hard to be something you don't want to be and other people want of you . Wow , right . And I said , okay , what should I do ? He said look , you're swimming hard against the stream . Stop Float , float on your back . Just imagine that floating on your back , notice everything that comes towards you , just see what you're attracting and find a community of people where you fit in . He said you're an outsider and that could be a problem or it could be brilliant , but it's not going to be easy . So I walked out of there . I was to use the word cured . All that depression had gone , so was a a fantastic one-off .

Martin Pollecoff 5:32

Then I worked for another couple of years and I , through a friend of mine who was an art director , I found I was introduced to a thing called infinity trainings , which was became exegesis , and I went on their course . It was a three-day course and it blew my mind . It literally blew my mind because I was quite well-educated but I'd never had an education in self , nothing . I'd never even looked in that direction . Really , exergis was a three-day course on self and it was just brilliant . I loved it and I asked if I could go and work with them and they said after six months they said yes , because I asked a lot of times and it meant I moved to Cobham in Surrey where it was headquartered and I slept in the shed because there was no room in the house at that point , but for the next three or four years I just worked on those seminars and then in 1981 I think it was , we were exposed in the daily mirror as being brainwashing , ruining families , etc .

Martin Pollecoff 6:49

Etc . Now there was a certain truth in that , because people came on the seminar in order to deal with something big . They wanted to leave their mother , they wanted to leave their wife , husband , whatever . They wanted to make big changes and they did . But for everybody else on the outside they go away on a Thursday night as X and come back as y and it can have tragic consequences that what we couldn't , however long we made the seminar , we could not get over that problem of people being able to communicate easily what had happened to them , so that really it didn't . This is weird . It didn't shut us down because many more people came and wanted to do the seminar , but most of them were crazy and looking for a bayonet to run on . So we couldn't really continue because previously people who loved humanistic psychology and things like this , they were , you know , in a space cadets , but now it's just people who are really weird but now it's just people who are really weird .

Malcolm Stern 7:55

So you've got two instances here where you've met people or you've met a sort of scenario which has turned your life around . It's funny . It's like it's almost as though well , jung says everything is synchronicity , and it feels like there was a synchronicity about your meeting with this psychiatrist marxist psychiatrist and then with your meeting with with exegesis , and I wonder where that led you from there well , I'd agree with you on synchronicity .

Martin Pollecoff 8:18

I agree with you on as you change your energy , you attract different people . Uh , and that was been a part of my work over a long period of time . So we there were about 12 hardcore exegetes in this and we were now unemployable . I'd gone from being a non-entity and absolutely anonymous to being unemployable because this ran for about six weeks in the mirror . So we had to close that down and we decided to start businesses , which we did , and one of them was telephone marketing , which took off . It was hard work but it took off . And that was before we had computers . So we were spending a lot of time with directories from all over the country phoning people up . Anyway , that

From Breakdown to Transformation

Martin Pollecoff 9:06

worked . And for the next 20 odd years I worked there . We created business after business and in 1996 , we sold out .

Martin Pollecoff 9:18

Now , for 18 of those years it was fabulous , you know , because we had seminars and we had the work , money was coming in . It was successful . A lot of pretty girls were attracted to this . It was just great . And the last three years , when there was money , it became very difficult because everyone was saying , well , I did this and you shouldn't get those shares , and et cetera , et cetera . However enlightened everybody was , they weren't enlightened around cash . So I sold my shares in it and it gave me enough money to buy a farm in Wales because I wanted . I was going square-headed . I've done so much business and I didn't really , I couldn't think so this was a way of getting away . We bought this farmhouse in Wales with 30 acres .

Martin Pollecoff 10:07

By then I was married , my wife loved farming and things like that , but you couldn't make a living out of that and I worked as a management consultant . At the same time I met some American psychotherapists who had been doing a thing called voice dialogue , and voice dialogue was speaking to different voices . It was Hal Stone and Sidra , his wife , and he was the first psychotherapist I'd met who actually impressed me right as a male . You know it's . It's a difficult male job , I think held together . You know he'd been in the army . He held it all together . He was fun , he was really kind and he was brilliant and he'd written the voice dialogue stuff which now you see as family systemic therapy . But he was a decade before that and all the words he invented are used by them . So but he's not the kind of guy who would want to start his own school . He wasn't interested . He wanted to be on his farm in Mendocino , in Albion , mendocino , in Northern California , and just be with his wife and do some work . That's all he did . So he was really impressive and he was great and I I remember coming to see him and saying to him I was telling him about how much money I've made by selling my shares and how brilliant I was .

Martin Pollecoff 11:42

Uh , and I was telling about the next brilliant thing I was going to do and he said to me Artie , what does ordinary feel like to you ? And I was like sorry , say that again . And he said well , ordinary , sorry , I can't , it doesn't compute . I really , what are you asking ? He said what's it like not to be brilliant or the worst or the greatest ? You know , just ordinary . And I think , christ , how , if , if I was ordinary , who would love me ?

Malcolm Stern 12:16

and he said that's a very important . That's a very important statement there . I'm sure that will speak to a lot of people who are listening to this as well . Yeah , and he said who will love me ? There's nothing special about who would love me and he said you might all right .

Martin Pollecoff 12:32

And I thought about it and with me , when I get some insights like that , it takes a long time to ground them . They're like , oh , and then there's the work has to be done . And I , my mum , was completely extraordinary . And if you said to her let's get something to eat , she said , yeah , well , there's a new restaurant around the corner , it's really good . And if you said to her , let's get something to eat , she said , yeah , well , there's a new restaurant around the corner , it's really good , and you go there . If you said to my dad , let's get something to eat , he'd say , yeah , well , there's cafeterias over there . It serves food For him . It didn't matter , it was just food . And he was remarkably ordinary and as a teenager I'd really resented it . I and he was remarkably ordinary and as a teenager I'd really resented it . I had really disliked it . I wanted him to be marvellous and wonderful .

Malcolm Stern 13:20

And he was an ordinary guy . It's funny he's an ordinary guy and you're meeting up with all these extraordinary men as well along the way .

Martin Pollecoff 13:26

It's mostly men my passage is mostly men Mostly because I've had two wives , both of which I've still got one of them . But my first wife changed me enormously . I was a sort of hick and she was incredibly sophisticated and we went all over the world and did amazing things that I wouldn't have dared to do . She was really bold and did whatever she liked , but we fought like cat and dog . My wife . We had our 29th wedding anniversary last week . So that's pretty good , because the hardest thing I've ever done is being married . It's the hardest thing to keep that together over thick and thin . It is really difficult , um I guess that's true .

Malcolm Stern 14:19

Someone once said to me is that they said you're not who you were 10 years ago . You're not who you're going to be in 10 years time . So how can you expect the relationship to navigate a path where both of you are on that trajectory ?

Martin Pollecoff 14:31

It's difficult . That is difficult and relationships are something I deal with . Most of my work is around relationships . But when I met her , I met with Hal and Sidra and seeing Hal as an example and how I could make Hal laugh , and he had a fabulous laugh . I mean , some people are funny and some people can laugh a lot he would fall off his chair laughing , he'd be banging the floor laughing and his face would just open up like a pez container , you know , and he just he was quite serious about occult matters . He spoke to and was guided by spirits

The Exegesis Experience

Martin Pollecoff 15:22

and things . You know . He was both intellectual and in this world and then out of the world .

Malcolm Stern 15:31

It's funny because a lot of so-called mystics in the current sort of like you know sort of personal development movement who sort of be channeling Mother Mary or whatever it is . But my sense about Hal Stone , who I knew from the old days , way back as well , was that he was a very grounded mystic and that's quite rare .

Martin Pollecoff 15:51

He was in between . It was in between those two worlds . You know , you'd have to tether him , but his wife was absolutely practical . So between them they made a great working pair . And he said something . He said I've been talking to the white brotherhood or something you know , and they keep on giving this advice . I'm getting ill and I had to row them . I said you haven't got bodies , I have , so just pack it in , you know . And that was the way he'd speak about things . Um , I am a very grounded person . I've never had a flying dream . I'm incredibly envious of people who have flying dreams and who are able to talk to spirits or to be able to travel outside of their body . Every time they tell me this , I'm like , oh god , I'd love to be able to do that , but it's not going to happen . You know , when I was about 11 , I had these ramsang lampa books do you remember those ? The third eye and things and I would spend most evenings trying to leave my body and float around like this fantastic mystic . But I love those things .

Malcolm Stern 17:02

So there's a , there's a a sort of a fascination with mysticism , and yet not a practical adaptation of your own psyche into mysticism .

Martin Pollecoff 17:11

No , I haven't . Well , I remember trying to get something . Nowadays you get books from everywhere . You get information that is everywhere . But I wanted to find out about Buddhism when I was about 12 . And I bought this book by Chris Humphreys thank him for his name . It was absolutely unreadable for me . He was a judge and he wrote like a judge . And it wasn't until I got a book by Alan Watts that I started to see that actually there is something here and again . I was brought up Jewish Orthodox , but I was never really interested in the synagogue stuff . I was interested in what they used to call Yiddishkeit , all the social stuff around it and how people interacted and the ethics of it . Great , I loved it , but I didn't get on in the synagogue , so I'm not sure we'll be coming here on this .

Malcolm Stern 18:11

We're just battling around .

Martin Pollecoff 18:13

But I had . I turned up at my primary school I was about seven I think with a yarmulke and tzitzis . My mother sent me to this Christian school dressed like a , you know , a 19th century rabbi . So I was fighting from day one and that made me , because I was absolutely determined not to stay down , you know . And I got to the point where people went just leave him alone , he's dangerous , he's a maniac , leave him alone . So that was quite a part of my Jewish upbringing , that you had to fight . And I wasn't big but I was vicious and I could turn it on and off , but I didn't like it . I didn't like that in me , I didn't like having to do it or hurt people , but it seemed for me the only way through . And in fact as a child I was sent to a psychiatrist because I was in a one of those Bournemouth Jewish hotels and I was playing billiards , snooker , with another kid my age I was really young and some 16 year olds came in and started saying okay , get off the table . And I just took a cue and I smashed one around with a cue and they were like he's crazy , the kid's crazy . So they sent me to a psychiatrist . But he told my mother everything . I told him . So I thought what's the point of this ? But going back to Hal , he was the beginnings of my thing . Well , I may as well . I've done the exegesis thing , which means I can put a whole room into catharsis , but that's pretty useless . What can I do to grow myself and to gain a profession where I can work with what I know ? And so I became a psychotherapist .

Martin Pollecoff 20:13

It was difficult getting through the training . It's even more difficult now , but it was difficult then because I was a man and I wasn't gay . If you were gay or a woman , everything flowed . If you're a guy , you were the rapist in the room . And it was difficult .

Martin Pollecoff 20:33

But Hallett said to me and this is a tragic thing he said , when you're training , you will find a lot of unfairness in the trainings . Shut up , do not rise to the bait and try and fix it . Just remember you're there to get your license , You're not there to clear up their politics . And so I stood by while a lot of nonsense went on . But everybody who stood up for it was out . And once you're out of one of those institutions it's very difficult to get back in somewhere else or to complete and it's got much worse over the years because of the DEI . It's now overlaid with the political side , which I disagree with . But I don't have to train now . But if somebody was training or somebody listening to this wants to train . I'd also say if you're going to do that , go find out what the politics are and also join the free speech Union . Take pound a month and they'll cover you if there's any problems and there are problems , there really are problems .

Malcolm Stern 21:45

So what were the problems being Martin these days ?

Martin Pollecoff 21:48

that you weren't you . You didn't believe the doctrination , the indoctrination , and you know , when I was training it was a sort of exegetical thing where they tried to get you to find things inside yourself . Now you're being told this is the problem with the world , it's racism , inequality , etc . Now those are external issues . Now for me , psychotherapy is about not the issues but how you handle those issues , how you take problems and how you work with them . It's not about changing the world , especially in a specific way . And I also think it's very bad for people of colour , because now they're looked at as like is that guy a diversity hire or did he actually do the work ? Did he get his degree ?

Martin Pollecoff 22:42

You know , I just think it's a tragedy and there's quite a lot of complaints that people are being shamed in front of others because they don't get it . And there's one woman who told me she they'd been given a list of disadvantaged

Building a Career and Finding Purpose

Martin Pollecoff 22:58

groups and she came back the next month and said look , I've looked up . The most disadvantaged group is working class men in the UK and all hell broke loose . You know , you're not there with the program . Basically , now that's an external , external . You can't do . I've never believed that psychotherapy changes social problems , that they're separate . You've got no levers for those . Nor should it be used to decide whether people get benefits . That's a that's a illegitimate use I of it . It's not the opium of the masses .

Malcolm Stern 23:35

That's interesting You've just brought up . Memories come up for me , as you've been speaking , in a medical practice in Lyme Regis and sometimes I would get people referred to me and their financial situation was so dire that it felt like what could I do to support them ? Send them to the social worker or take a very practical stance . But I suppose it's a bit like Maslow's hierarchy of needs that when survival is on the line , it's a very different ballgame as well . So what do you do ?

Martin Pollecoff 24:08

with that . Well , I worked in a drink and drugs clinic for two years and you get stuff like I'm not dealing with this . Here's a guy taking care of his mum . How do you do that ? You know these are real social problems and psychotherapy is illegitimately used to do that . Get rid of the problem first , then we can deal with the psychotherapy , the psychology of it .

Martin Pollecoff 24:40

There is a hierarchy of needs there , really one , maybe not maslow's one , but if you're not able to eat and put money on the table , you know because , coming from birmingham when I was a child , it was the highest paid working class area in the country , higher than london , and any guy who had a job , any job could keep his wife and children . There was , there must have been , some poverty , but not very much . It wasn't there . But when I worked in rexham in the drink and drug clinic the problems were ridiculous and insolvable unless you had a team . I worked eight years in Soho community mental health team and that was great , great , really interesting , because you've got a team of people around you . You can say to someone this guy's got housing problems , he's got financial problems , someone will work it out . But working at home on your own or working in a small clinic . You can't do that .

Malcolm Stern 25:38

What's your line as a psychotherapist ? What is it that you specialize in now ? What is it that you can see where you make a difference ? Your unique contribution can make a difference to others .

Martin Pollecoff 25:50

Well , I'm what you'd call a transpersonal psychotherapist or a spiritual psychotherapist and I'm interested in how that person's life is shaping up the shape of the life . Are they going down a spiritual route ? Are they digging a hole for themselves over here ? How's it working out ? Because I see lives in stages , like old-fashioned rockets that would drop off a bit and another bit until the last bit gets to the stage , because that's been my experience of my life . You know that things drop away . They fall away . Uh , I think I help people raise their level of confrontation . What they felt they could do before . They feel bigger and they can do more , you know , and that gives them courage . And , as young said , a uh . A therapist acts as an auxiliary tank to the client or the patient they've got . An auxiliary courage is given to them when they feel like well , you know , he's in my life now and I can do this . And using the energetics of voice , dialogue , you can do remarkable things .

Martin Pollecoff 27:19

I had a young girl come to me . She was 16 and had a baby she was looking after . She was very bright , but her career had been ruined by getting pregnant and we worked together for a few weeks . Her problem was her father had died and left us some money and the uncles were trying to take the money and she just didn't have the courage to confront them . Anyway , we worked for a few weeks and this was in Mind in Harrow Road . It's gone now , but it was quite a good setup and I was like at the end of my talk I couldn't get anything out of it and I said , look , do you have have , when you read a book or see a film or something , do you have any characters that stand out as being really courageous ? They would be able to handle this ? No , okay , nothing . Do you have any friends or relatives who will be able to do this ? No , well , have you read a book in which you think somebody's pretty great ? She said , yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah . What's the book ? It's Jordan's biography . You know the topless model .

Martin Pollecoff 28:34

And I was like , hmm , okay , what is it about Jordan that you found so good ? And she said , well , she's got this damaged child and she really looks after it , she loves the child , she's very beautiful , she rides horses . And you know what she didn't say she has sex on her terms , which my client didn't right , okay , what would Jordan do ? Oh , jordan just turned off . Okay , right , we don't have a lot of time now . So I want I said , okay , what would Jordan do ? Oh , jordan would just turn his side off . Okay , right , we don't have a lot of time now . So I want you to start , get up and walk like Jordan . Feel Jordan inside you , the spirit of Jordan . Let's get this going . Come on . And we did that . And for two weeks we practiced being Jordan . I said , okay , you're not going to go to the meeting , jordan is Jordan's going to turn up . And she ripped them apart . She ripped them apart . This was fantastic , and that was using some of Hal's stuff , you know .

The Essence of Psychotherapy Practice

Malcolm Stern 29:39

And I love doing that . But Hal's stuff adapted to you as well , so you've taken on .

Martin Pollecoff 29:45

Yeah , it's through the Martin Polikoff lens . You know , when you're learning you've taken on . It's through the martin polykov lens . Yeah , you know , when you're learning , you take what you think's great and you discard the rest , and that's absolutely legitimate . That's totally legitimate because we can't all do . The technique in therapy is just it's silly , it's silly .

Malcolm Stern 29:59

There's no technique that works and there's lots of techniques you might use , but it's a it's a mishmash so it's knowing which , which is the magic bullets take out of your backpack to to provide in that moment yeah , well , that was , that was the energetics finding the inner jordan .

Martin Pollecoff 30:18

Um , and I've done that with quite a few people are finding the inner , whatever it is they need which gives them because it's in . Well , let's put it this way , there's nothing that can be given to you you haven't already got . If you haven't got it already , it can't be given to you because you've got nothing it can't match . So you've got to find the part of them inside that you can transfer over to the new problem . So you find somebody who's very , um , very able physically and not somewhere else . So we get the physical , the person who feels really confident physically , and we try and transfer him over to this social problem that he's got you know and say what would he do ? What ? What do you call the footballer ? Oh , here's another one like that . I had a woman who's been married for 25 years , got children , and her husband leaves her for the babysitter and left with no money . It's a mess , a real mess . But every time he phones up she falls apart and he asks her for some more money or asks for something . She just says yes , so she's she's crumpling and I said okay , well , tell you what we'll do . Do you have a party that will kill . And she , I said okay , let's imagine that you come in . You find Jimmy Savile on top of your child . Oh , I just rip him apart , all right ? Okay , fine , so we know that's there , right , we know that's there . What do you call that part ? Okay , make up a name for it . Hellbitch , brilliant . Okay , next time he phones , pick up the phone and say hi , look , just give me two minutes , I'll phone you back . Put the phone back immediately , then get into hell bitch . You can't deal with this , but hell bitch can . Right , he was just . She tore through him . You know it was great . She tore through him , you know it was great . And she came back glowing , absolutely glowing , because when people get a win on this , see what I like about psychotherapy is the magic of it . Yeah , when it hits the spot , it really does fantastic things .

Martin Pollecoff 32:44

And while I worked in the NHS , we were working on community mental health team , which meant people who would normally have been in an asylum , a hospital , and lived their life in a hospital , but now they're living in a bedsit somewhere in Soho and they're taking medication and their life is pretty awful . They what was called , you know shit life syndrome . You know they were . Their mother was 14 when they were had . There's no father around , the mother's wonders off . They get pregnant at 14 . You know . The whole lot goes , cascades down and it's pretty difficult to get someone back from that and they're damaged . They'd be deeply damaged . So you're really looking for some low-hanging fruit to get a few wins , that's , that's it . And my psychiatrist , who I worked under , was very clever , just basically said don't try and get that person well , just be a companion to them , because if she realizes what she's done to herself she'll kill herself . So you know you are holding people's noses above water and you are providing a human contact which they didn't have . They didn't have friends normally .

Malcolm Stern 34:05

So you would be like a wise friend who has an interest but is not hooked into their story either .

Martin Pollecoff 34:11

Yeah , I like them .

Malcolm Stern 34:13

I like them , all of them . I think that helps a lot when we like our clients Exactly .

Martin Pollecoff 34:17

I can't work with somebody I don't like .

Malcolm Stern 34:20

Yeah , I'm the same Right .

Martin Pollecoff 34:23

I like them . And there's one woman I spent an extra year in the NHS just to treat and she was crazy , you know , she couldn't . She was so destructive to herself . It was awful , yeah , but I really liked her and I have I have my heart's not the best . And I was talking to her one day and suddenly all my blood just drained away and I said , well , and she said are you okay ? I went no , I'm not . And it came back and she said well , you're one of us , really aren't you ? And I said , yeah , well , what she meant is you're broken , you know .

Malcolm Stern 35:08

I think that's really important . It's so we see so often the sort of like the therapist , who sits in the position of power and actually just pontificates rather than actually allows themselves to be part of the process as well .

Martin Pollecoff 35:20

Yeah , and that's so important . I never pretended to be Sherlock Holmes or whatever you know . Oh , it's this . Now I know it's that you are a friend to those who don't have friends , you're a companion .

Malcolm Stern 35:35

You're a wise companion to those .

Martin Pollecoff 35:37

Yeah , you're a wise companion . You're not a harmful companion . You're not a harmful companion .

Martin Pollecoff 35:47

When you're good , it's not in the way either . No , no , well , that's you know . But we'd have a laugh . She'd come in , she'd say I could go to . I've given myself a coffee enema . She weighed about three pounds . She was like anorexic . I said what coffee do you use ? I said just ordinary coffee , sort of the decaf or , and she was no , this coffee it's just coffee , it's a coffee . It's cheap coffee . Okay , why do you want to know ? I said I don't know if it's just , perhaps different coffees do different things , who knows ? You know , um , we , we tend to have a laugh together and , uh , enjoy each other's company , but I , I , I think that's valuable

Finding Inner Jordan: Client Success Stories

Martin Pollecoff 36:31

, I thought that was really valuable , that work , um , because people so often they're so far out of society yes , humor is one of the underrated skills we bring to our work as well .

Malcolm Stern 36:47

So it's like if we can bring humour in , if we can lift it sometimes into the realms of the sort of , like you know , the sort of the craziness of it all and we go with them . I think that's pretty good news . So we're coming towards the end of our podcast . Martin , it's been great having a chat with you . It's been a long time and I just wonder . There's a question I always ask at the end , which is what's the particular dragon you've had to slay , what's the obstacle you've had ?

Martin Pollecoff 37:15

to overcome in order to be who you are Fear . I think that's the thing . Mostly I've had to be courageous when I was very frightened that both at once had to be courageous , because I was so frightened of things , uh , frightened of being abandoned , frightened of being the failure . You know , I , I know I'm , yeah , I have a what they call it an illegitimate problem . You know , being a psychotherapist sounds great , but when I first started I was like I hope a real psychotherapist turns up because I'm going to fucking clear what I'm doing Imposter syndrome , and you know it's that fear .

Malcolm Stern 38:02

Have you overcome that or are you still dancing with that ?

Martin Pollecoff 38:05

Yeah , well , well , sort of . But I had a really big heart operation about two years ago and I had to come to terms with that , you know , because I was told you might not wake up . Wow and um , I signed lots of stuff and they came in , said , an hour before , an hour before the operation , they came in this swiss doctor , lovely looking woman , very straight . So right , sign this . So what is it ? Don't read it , just sign it . I said do I need a lawyer ? I just need to sign it . I said what if I don't sign it ? He said , okay , we don't sign it . He said , okay , we don't operate and you die , pass me the pen .

Malcolm Stern 38:50

So you had your heart operated on .

Martin Pollecoff 38:52

I had my heart operated on and I wrote to about 25 people just saying look , I'm having a heart operation this afternoon and I want you to know that and I might not come through it , but I want to thank you now because you're with me now . The fact that you and I've you know I've sent you a lot of people , the fact that I know you , gives me the courage to do this right , so I'd want to thank you . Whatever happens here , I want to thank you , um , and that was liberating . So by the time I came for the operation , I was whatever happens happens . It's beyond . I can't control this . Yes , I can't control this . Is that the divine has to do this ?

Malcolm Stern 39:47

yes , and I'll accept whatever happens and I've got no choice exactly yeah , this reminded me I should keep this brief as well , but it reminded me of when I had a heart attack in about five years ago and I was in the ambulance and I thought I might die and suddenly there was a moment of bliss . And that moment of bliss actually was like ah , if I die , I've lived my life well , I've written my legacy book and I felt like I could let go and it was just such an amazing relief . It didn't last , but it was amazing .

Martin Pollecoff 40:16

No , I understand , and my nonchalance about dying didn't last for me , but I want to say to you , I want to thank you for your work with alternatives , because you know , the new age in britain owes a lot to that . There's only you and findhorn , basically , but you , you know it's a . It's a , it's an underrated and amazing thing that happened .

Malcolm Stern 40:46

Thank you very much . I've met some amazing people on my journey . I bet you have . You're one , Martin as well

Heart Surgery and Facing Mortality

Malcolm Stern 40:51

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Martin Pollecoff 40:51

Thank you , Thanks for inviting me Very much .

Malcolm Stern 40:54

Thanks for coming on the show and look forward to seeing you .